🚀 Astronaut Butch Wilmore’s daughter has publicly expressed frustration over her father’s extended stay in space, pointing fingers at NASA’s handling of the situation.
Daryn Wilmore, 19, voiced her concerns in several TikTok posts earlier this year, hinting that “politics” and “negligence” were responsible for her father’s prolonged stay aboard the International Space Station (ISS)—far beyond the mission’s original timeline.
A Mission That Was Supposed to Last Days Stretched to Nearly 10 Months
🛰️ Wilmore, 62, and fellow astronaut Suni Williams, 59, finally returned to Earth on Tuesday evening, concluding a mission that was initially planned to last just over a week but instead stretched into a gruelling 286-day ordeal in space.
🌍 The two U.S. astronauts safely splashed down off the coast of Tallahassee, Florida, aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule at 6 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday. The return marked the end of a prolonged saga that left them effectively stranded in orbit for nearly 10 months.
Daryn Wilmore: “Politics and Negligence Played a Role”
📢 Daryn Wilmore’s frustrations first surfaced in January, when she subtly hinted at dissatisfaction with NASA’s handling of her father’s return.
In a February post, she went further, suggesting that “politics and negligence” played a significant role in the delays that kept Wilmore and Williams aboard the ISS long past their scheduled return date.
Now that her father is safely back on Earth, Daryn acknowledged to the Daily Mail that while NASA made the safest decision in keeping the astronauts in orbit, “there were definitely some mess-ups.”
📢 Clarifying her previous remarks, she stated:
👉 “I really just meant that there were different things within the company that led to the decision of them staying, which was a good decision and the safest one.”
However, she also pointed to deeper issues within NASA’s operations:
📢 “There’s a lot of politics, there’s a lot of things that I’m not at liberty to say, and that I don’t know fully about. But there’s been issues. There’s been negligence. And that’s the reason why this has just kept getting delayed. There’s just been issue after issue after issue.”
NASA and SpaceX Welcome the Astronauts Home
🎙️ “Butch, Suni, on behalf of SpaceX, welcome home,” a Mission Control dispatcher radioed moments after the Dragon Freedom capsule made a successful water landing.
Less than an hour later, Wilmore and Williams—along with American astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov—were extracted from the capsule by a recovery team.
🔥 Despite the ordeal, both astronauts appeared in good spirits, smiling, pumping their fists, and showing resilience as they were helped onto their feet and transported away in wheelchairs.
NASA Defends the Extended Mission
🔬 NASA officials have praised the astronauts’ contributions during their extended mission, highlighting that they conducted over 150 experiments aboard the ISS, advancing research for future space travel.
📢 Joel Montalbano, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for space operations, defended the extended mission, stating:
👉 “The work we do on the International Space Station benefits the nation, benefits people on Earth, and are the building blocks for going back to the moon and to Mars.”
What Went Wrong? Boeing’s Starliner Failure and Political Delays
🚀 The mission, which originally launched in June, was supposed to last just eight days.
However, technical failures with Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft made a timely return impossible.
Reports later surfaced suggesting that the Biden administration was reluctant to authorize an earlier rescue attempt due to concerns that a botched mission could lead to negative political optics.
📢 Instead, multiple delays forced Wilmore and Williams to remain in orbit for nearly 10 months, waiting for a safe return option.
The Family’s Emotional Toll
👨👧👦 For Wilmore’s family, the prolonged wait was agonizing.
Daryn Wilmore’s public comments reflect the emotional strain that came with her father being stranded in space for far longer than expected.
While NASA maintains that keeping the astronauts aboard the ISS was the safest choice, the controversy surrounding the delays raises serious questions about the effectiveness of Boeing’s Starliner program and the political influence on space missions.
What’s Next?
🚀 NASA is now under pressure to ensure that future space missions avoid similar technical failures and bureaucratic hurdles.
With Boeing’s Starliner at the center of the controversy, the space agency faces mounting scrutiny over its decision-making processes and whether politics played too big a role in delaying the astronauts’ return.
🔎 Should NASA be held accountable for the delays, or was safety the top priority?
💬 What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments below!